A stamp of shame

And I’m running out of synonyms for “grovel”

The Indian passport will now carry a stamp of shame.

“The Protector of Emigrants, while giving clearance for travel to Kuwait and Jordan, will endorse in the passports of applicants, a stamp that the passport is not valid for travel to Iraq,” the minister said. [Rediff]

And as demanded by the kidnappers, it is likely that an Indian diplomat will drag the country’s nose through the mud on all major Arab satellite television channels.

Millions of people around the world are likely to be treated to a spectacle of an official representative of this nation of a billion people, a nuclear power to boot, an aspirant for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, humbly bow down and kiss the collective posteriors of terrorists. In many countries, such an insult would have been enough for the government to resign. In India, Manmohan Singh’s lack of leadership reveals that he is not prime-ministerial material. [Update: It was Congress president Sonia Gandhi who ‘summoned‘ the Cabinet for an update on the hostage crisis. The prime minister probably was reading all those files in detail.]

Niraj writes that the terrorists have ironically invoked Gandhi in their demands. But there is a greater irony. Gandhi prevailed over an occupying force by the sheer moral force of non-violence; the Manmohan Singh government allowed itself to be prevailed over by a bunch of violent terrorists whose methods Gandhi would have, shall we say, disapproved.